Cookbooks

By CHRISTINE MUHLKE

Published: December 3, 2010

What confusing times these are. And I’m talking just about new cookbook offerings. Fall’s usual glut of ­chef-y titles, primed for the giving, are notably absent. The food we’re being offered is much simpler, much faster and removed from the realm of fantasy — unless we’re talking about “Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking,” the Microsoft executive turned cooking whiz Nathan Myhrvold’s $625 tome on 21st-century techniques (which you can preorder in advance of its March 2011 publication). The one big restaurant book is from a chef in Denmark who plucks his ingredients from rocks, beaches, logs, even cracks in the sidewalk. In short, we’re looking closer to home.

Michael Harlan Turkell

Chayote salad with grapefruit and vanilla, from “The New Brooklyn Cookbook.”

When the going gets iffy, the iffy get baking. This season there are excellent books on offer for those warming up for a cookie swap, trying to perfect the baguette or looking to commit murder by butter (four sticks should do it). Speaking of untimely death, THE GOURMET COOKIE BOOK (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $18) features one recipe for every year Gourmet magazine was in business, making for 69 gems in this beautifully designed keepsake.

The recipes are grouped by decade, from the ration-era pluck of the 1940s (honey refrigerator cookies and Scotch oat crunchies), when the magazine was published out of a penthouse in the Plaza Hotel, to the twisted classics of the oughts (cranberry turtle bars and glittering lemon sandwich cookies). The wistful headnotes offer historical insight into our past tastes and aspirations. In 1953, we’re informed, “the recipe list for the October issue included wild duck, young partridge with grapes, poached marrow, couscous, neck of lamb Grecque,feijoada, goose liver pies and petites bouchées.” Why, I wonder, am I drawn to the sweets of the 1940s through the 1960s — pretty brown-butter cookies, brandy snaps and Moravian white Christmas cookies? Perhaps each generation finds comfort in its grandmother’s repertoire.

Alice Medrich has moved the ball of dough forward with CHEWY GOOEY CRISPY CRUNCHY MELT-IN-YOUR-MOUTH COOKIES (Artisan, paper, $25.95), rethinking everything she baked, rebooting classics and modernizing techniques. You can almost picture the flour-covered spreadsheets and flow charts. Many recipes, from bittersweet decadence cookies to salted peanut toffee cookies, offer the competitive baker creative “upgrades”: you can ratchet up the decadence by folding in candied orange peel and increasing the amount of nuts, or transform salted peanut toffee cookies with white chocolate or Thai curry cashews.

Medrich’s interest in bringing new or unusual ingredients into play — spelt flour in a buttery sablé, cacao nibs in rugelach, cardamom caramel in a palmier — stimulates thought while triggering favorable gut reactions. And the wheat-averse will rejoice at her gluten-free adaptations, including one for caramel cheesecake bars. Above all, Medrich is determined to make us better bakers. In her first chapter, called the “User’s Guide,” she insists (among other things) that we check our oven temperatures, spoon flour into a measuring cup rather than scoop and follow her recipe instructions to the letter. With her constant nudging, you’ll never overmix or beat chilled egg whites again. And your cookies will be the better for it.

They might look like another pair of fresh-faced Brooklynites (retro tie and mustache? check), but Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, the owners of the Baked sweet shops in Brooklyn and Charleston, are media-savvy butter fiends. Their second book, BAKED EXPLORATIONS: Classic American Desserts Reinvented (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $29.95), promises twists on classic and kitschy recipes. Although its twee typographical styling will look dated in about 10 minutes, the text will make it seem entirely rational to want to bake chocolate whoopie pies, Boston cream pie cake, Almond Joy tart or monkey bubble bread. I was thrilled to discover that Lewis, who shares my obsession with Biscoffs, Delta Air Lines’ take on the traditional Dutch speculaas cookie, spent a long time trying to re-create them. They’re better than an upgrade. And those whoopie pies? Four sticks of buttery fun. Oh to be young, decadent and baked in Brooklyn.

Chad Robertson is young and cool, but of the West Coast variety: a scruffy-cute surfer dad with a serious bread obsession. His earnest and lovely TARTINE BREAD (Chronicle Books, $40) shares secrets of the naturally fermented kind. A co-owner of the beloved Tartine Bakery in San Francisco’s Mission District (I’ve almost missed flights standing in line for croque monsieur and bread pudding), Robertson shares a recipe for basic country bread that’s worth attempting. And his 37 pages of detailed instructions and clear photographs are proof he really wants you to succeed. (Further, um, proof: he gave his recipe to two novice bakers, and includes their notes.)

Robertson’s basic method incorporates some elements of the wildly popular no-knead method — you bake the dough in a cast-iron casserole to create a mini-oven — except that you have to take much more care than no-knead’s dump-and-stir approach. To be honest (and it kind of kills me to say this), the no-knead method works better for my impatient East Coast life, but Robertson did increase my understanding of the mysteries of bread, without taxing my brain like Peter Reinhart’s books can. There are plenty of variations: pizza dough, walnut bread and the seductive brioche lardon, which incorporates bacon, hazelnuts, thyme and orange zest. Especially great is the chapter on what to do with days-old bread. The recipes for panade (don’t ask, just try), eggplant involtini and meatball sandwiches will keep you from finishing the loaf, no matter what method you used to bake it.